The last two weekends of April were a Boxer-lover's dream, but you had to be in Germany. After three weeks of bouncing around visiting friends from Bavaria to Berlin and points between, we ended our trip with the two-day ATIBOX World Performance Championship and, on the next Friday (April 29), the European Boxer Championship (conformation).
A Boxer performance trial can be something very special. Not only do you see the joy that the animal experiences, but you have the incomparable Boxer temperament to always add something unexpected and usually hilarious.
Schutzhund training is almost unknown among Boxers in the United States, but the number of Boxers in Schutzhund training in Germany is only exceeded by German Shepherds. To train a Boxer in Germany means to give it Schutzhund training. That includes most of our obedience training, along with the protection training that was so closely tied to the German Boxer’s earlier reputation as a police dog.
A full performance trial will include the two parts of obedience and protection , but will also have tracking as an equal third part. For the spectators at a trial, tracking is seldom seen because it is held at a different venue. You see the tracking score for each dog, and you calculate it into what the dog does on the field. The performance score, however, consists of all three parts, with equal weight to each.
ATIBOX is an international organization of national Boxer clubs. It is the only organization of its type, but does not contain the ABC, Boxer Club of Canada, British Boxer Club, and most of the clubs in the areas of the former British Empire. ATIBOX shows are held primarily in the European countries, and have always been conformation shows. This year the first ATIBOX World Performance Trial was held in Bad Godesberg, Germany, on the banks of the Rhine river. From our seats in the soccer-track stadium where the trial was held, we could clearly see three castles on the peaks across the Rhine river.
Officially, the show began a day before the competition. In a ceremony similar to the Olympics, about a thousand spectators watched as the teams (handler and dog are a team) marched into the stadium where the trial was held. The teams were grouped by nationality, with thirty-eight teams from eleven nations being present, and as they marched by the national anthem of each nation was played. It was a very moving ceremony.
Here was a microcosm of the new Europe. Cheers for all nations came from the German crowd, especially for the Italians and French, who are quite popular with Germans. The Czech Republic’s teams marched by to great applause, as did Poland. Germany had the most teams in competition, teams that included several from the "other" Germany, now a part of the new Deutschland.
In this little event of a dog show, one could see wonderful evidence that Europe’s great struggles with nationalism might finally be at an end.
One half of the teams took the tracking test on Friday; the other half on Saturday. Competition in obedience and Schutzhund began on Saturday and continued on Sunday. When we arrived at the stadium at 8:00 AM Saturday, it was about half full, but before long probably 2,000 people were present and cheering. Besides being a dog show, this was a rather festive event. A full bar was on the premises, as was a fairly good selection of cooked food. Plenty of beer and bratwurst for everybody!
Saturday night saw the Festabend, a big party night with a huge buffet and dance band (entrance fee about $30 each). It was a tamer evening than what had been at the 100th Anniversary show of the Germany Boxer Club in 1995, but fun nevertheless. At least they played danceable music, something usually missing at the ABC.
Sunday was the last day, and the most exciting. The contestants were primarily from the Schutzhund III group, the most advanced in training. The Grand Winner would come out of this class. Even at this high level, the handler could hardly count on the Boxer doing its exercises in a robot-like manner. Schutzhund training and competition is always the same, and the helper (who wears protective clothing and a huge arm shield) is always behind the last shelter. In Frau Stockmann's times, the helper was called the criminal, which reveals the origin of the training.
More than once, an eager Boxer decided to forego the nonsense of inspecting the first five empty shelters before getting to the one that hid the helper and just skipped a couple. One skipped all five and went straight to the "criminal". Of course, that was a disqualification.
Another time, a Boxer with very high scores was to do the long out. This consists of leaving the handler on command and running straight ahead down the field. When the handler shouts "Platz," meaning down, the dog should then stop, turn around to face the handler and lie down. This time the Boxer decided running full speed down a soccer field was great fun, and despite the exasperated handler's repeated shouts of "Platz," the dog kept going to the end of the field. He then ran into the goalie's cage, turned around, ran back about 20 yards, lay down and waited for his master. Of course, the crowd howled with laughter and clapped wildly.
In the end, it came down to a match between the three top scorers in tracking. That was no accident, since they scored highest in tracking because they had the best trained dogs. As luck would have it, this competition went right down to the last competitor, who still had a chance to win the championship.
The grand winner was a team from Switzerland, a man and Boxer who have won many other European trials before this one. Second place went to a German team, a woman and Boxer who had won the National Championship in 1997, and are also well-known in performance competition. She was the only one there to have a perfect score in tracking. Third place went to a French team, also well known to the spectators.
But it wasn't over just because the competition had finished. There was an elaborate awards and closing ceremony, complete with a full orchestra in tuxedos to play classical music. When the teams reentered the stadium for their awards, this "band" broke into a series of march tunes, one of which was "Stars and Stripes Forever." All competitors received a trophy and other awards.
As the three top teams stood on their pedestals, the winner's male Boxer never once took his eyes off the third-place Boxer bitch on the stand to his left. He couldn’t have cared less for what kind of accolades and prizes his owner was receiving. They were in two different worlds.
The conformation show on the next weekend was in Dortmund, Germany. Called the European championship show, it featured over 200 breeds competing for the Sieger titles, BOB, Group, and BIS. Sieger titles in Boxers go to the best adult fawn dog and bitch, and best adult brindle dog and bitch. The same goes for Boxers under 18 months, who are given Junior Sieger titles. For this show, all titles would be called European Siegers. All Sieger winners compete for best in their sex and then BOB or "most beautiful Boxer." There was an entry of 138.
Most ATIBOX-member shows feature sparring, a form of controlled hostility. The Boxers, controlled by a long (7-8 foot) line, are allowed to face-off against each other. In the opening 10 or 15 minutes, each class consists of sparring, which to the untrained eye looks chaotic and creates an enormous racket as 15 to 20 Boxers bark incessantly at each other and strain at their leashes.
In the midst of it all is the judge, walking around sizing up the dogs. What is the judge looking for? He’s looking for dominant, fearless dogs. He’s looking for the Boxer boss, be it bitches or dogs. My assumption is that this initial stage of sparring is about as important for a German judge as the first lineup is for an American judge.
Germany has had a ban on ear cropping since about 1990, and a ban on tail docking went into place on January 1, 1998. There were no dogs with tails in this show, but quite a few were uncropped. On the other hand, quite a few were cropped too. Most European countries still crop, contrary to what many people think in this country. Bans on cropping exist in Germany, Scandinavian lands, and Great Britain.
At the Performance Trial in Bad Godesberg, we saw quite a few young Boxers with tails, but none were in the competition. German breeders are very nervous about the docking ban. One woman with a ten-week-old undocked puppy told me she is having trouble placing her puppies because of the tails. Europe is small, and if you want a cropped and docked puppy it’s only one or two hundred miles at most to another country where both are fully legal.
In the show at Dortmund, both the top male and bitch were cropped. One was from Spain and the other from France. The male could have easily won here too (in my limited opinion), but the bitch was a solidly built bundle of muscle that might have looked a bit doggy in an American ring. She took BOB.
